The Swamp

Yeah, I see first hand the developments with solar here. Per capita we lead the country in solar energy production. Like I said I'm more curious about the smart grid technology. Everything I've ever read says that the major stumbling block to using wind or solar is that the energy can't be transported easily so it's essentially only local energy. If you could generate solar energy in Nevada or wind energy in Kansas and ship it to Texas then that would be a game changer.

brian wrote:Yeah, I see first hand the developments with solar here. Per capita we lead the country in solar energy production. Like I said I'm more curious about the smart grid technology. Everything I've ever read says that the major stumbling block to using wind or solar is that the energy can't be transported easily so it's essentially only local energy. If you could generate solar energy in Nevada or wind energy in Kansas and ship it to Texas then that would be a game changer.

Right. And likely very expensive for Texans, who, despite preconceived notions, probably don't want bigger power bills.

To follow up on my earlier post, here is an article by the aforementioned David Roberts from 2012, discussing the solar and clean energy provisions of the stimulus.

http://grist.org/politics/obamas-stimul ... -grunwald/

Here's another more recent article about the growth of solar power:

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/10/11192022/b ... boom-times

Total power plant emissions in the US are about twenty percent less than they were ten years ago, down to about the same level as 1993.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/powe ... ign=buffer

Steve of phpBB wrote:Total power plant emissions in the US are about twenty percent less than they were ten years ago, down to about the same level as 1993.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/powe ... ign=buffer

The electric power sector’s carbon emissions are falling for several reasons. Warmer winters in the U.S., influenced by global warming, have reduced the need for people to heat their homes, driving down electric power demand in the winter months, according to the EIA.

Great...I think.

Elon Musk continues to be my hero.

After the Falcon 9 booster failed to land safely yesterday, Musk says the rocket experienced a "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly". So much more eloquent than "shit hit barge hard and exploded"

Woo hoo! Some good news about the ozone layer.

Hole in ozone layer is closing and will be 'healed' by 2050

some yabhoo tweeted:

That's because no more '80s aerosol hairspray, right?

That's what they told us. I never read the science.

howard wrote:some yabhoo tweeted:

Nice avatar. Racist.

Johnnie told me it was OK.

Road trip!

rass wrote:

Are you fucking with me?

Nope. That is really a U.S. House committee Twitter account tweeting an anti-climate change story from Breitbart.

Welcome to the new world. Bring hip waders because it's gonna get deep.

I should have created a "Science???" thread.

Sabo wrote:Nope. That is really a U.S. House committee Twitter account tweeting an anti-climate change story from Breitbart.

Welcome to the new world. Bring hip waders because it's gonna get deep.

Here's a time-lapse movie showing four Jupiter-sized planets orbiting a star. Pretty freaking remarkable.

Incredible.

This past weekend was Earth Day and a march for science. However, having from the comments in this Reddit thread, they use the same closemindedness as religion in its approach.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/deg ... us_science



(Also, those stories are cool, Sabo. Didn't want to step on your dick. Saw the bump in thread and thought to add to this.)

Reminds me of this:

I don't like the way NDT said that at all. Yes, facts are true whether or not you believe them but you sure as hell have the option not to believe them. That's kind of the point of freedom.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ...

Jerloma wrote:I don't like the way NDT said that at all. Yes, facts are true whether or not you believe them but you sure as hell have the option not to believe them. That's kind of the point of freedom.

That's like saying you have the freedom to believe that Sandy Hook was a false flag and the kids who died were made up.

It's legally true you can say that, but it's morally and socially reprehensible. I think that was NDT's point and he's right.

And it was a comment about those in power. Very different than a dipshit neighbor posting a blizzard pic on Facebook with "GLOBAL WARMING???"

Well that's certainly the danger of having an uninformed population in a democracy but it's still kind of how it works. The idiots will almost always vote for the idiots.

So if trump immediately cut all school funding because he doesn't believe right to an education is a real principle and congress went along, we shrug and say it's his right to believe that.

Yes?

I wouldn't think he meant democracy in the sense of the construct itself. If so, then I'm with Jerlomes - it doesn't really make sense. I think he just meant it as a shorthand for "America" or "our society"

Ryan wrote:Yes?

I wouldn't think he meant democracy in the sense of the construct itself. If so, then I'm with Jerlomes - it doesn't really make sense. I think he just meant it as a shorthand for "America" or "our society"

I think you can literally extrapolate it out to democracy though because if people literally stop believing things that are true are not true, then it's a pretty short step to being able to more easily subvert democracy (the institution).

brian wrote:

Ryan wrote:Yes?

I wouldn't think he meant democracy in the sense of the construct itself. If so, then I'm with Jerlomes - it doesn't really make sense. I think he just meant it as a shorthand for "America" or "our society"

I think you can literally extrapolate it out to democracy though because if people literally stop believing things that are true are not true, then it's a pretty short step to being able to more easily subvert democracy (the institution).

If 51% of people stop believing things that are true, then it's still a democracy, right? A completely fucked geopolitical entity, but a democracy.

We're basically already there.

mister d wrote:So if trump immediately cut all school funding because he doesn't believe right to an education is a real principle and congress went along, we shrug and say it's his right to believe that.

No we condemn the piss out of them first but yeah...basically. That's kind of the danger of democracy.

I think NDT's quote omits a crucial point. Yes, facts are true whether we believe them or not. But for most facts, especially facts relevant for public policy, we don't have firsthand knowledge of them. We have to take other peoples' words for them. And in most cases involving scientific, those other people don't have firsthand knowledge, but instead are drawing conclusions based on certain studies, or investigations, or experiments, or whatever.

And those people can make mistakes, or be biased, or be dishonest.

So yes, facts are true whether we believe them or not, but when you read or hear about something outside of your own direct knowledge, you have to make a choice as to whether to believe the people telling you about it.